Memoirs and morsels from home and abroad

easy does it

If there is a complicated way to do something and an easy way, I will inevitably choose the former.

But I was recently reminded of the beauty in keeping things simple. This time of year, the week between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, is a time of self-reflection — not a bad time to review this lesson that holds both in the kitchen and out.

Having only cooked for Rosh Hashana once before, I received a lot of help from my family in preparing to share the 2 days of holidays with over a dozen guests: we divided and conquered. I planned the overambitious menus (only parts of which ever came to fruition). My parents brought a case of wine up from Maryland. My dad and sister did most of the food shopping. My mom helped with much of the food prep, acting as sous chef in my kitchen.

Even with all those helping hands, I was nonetheless overjoyed to discover a cake that nearly bakes itself.

Not Derby Pie touts the base recipe as “The Easiest Cake Ever” and Rivka pictured it with ripe, juicy pears. I planned to add in some apples to the pears in honor of Rosh Hashana and to make it reminiscent of a gâteau pomme poire that I have been trying to recreate since I did a high school student exchange in the Loire valley followed by the Vendée in the northwest of France. However, given that my sister did the grocery shopping and doesn’t like pears, I ended up with just an apple cake. Not that this is just any apple cake.

The high egg content causes the cake to rise up as the heavier fruit sinks slightly. A light sprinkling of raw demerara sugar creates a crackly crunchy crust that caramelizes slightly at the edges and where the fruit juices pool.

Easy Apple Cake

Adapted from Not Derby Pie’s “Easiest Cake Ever” which is recommended for ripe, juicy fruits such as pears, stone fruits, or berries. Given that I was using apples that were not particularly juicy, I decided to first saute them in some margarine and sugar, giving them a slight juicy caramelization as I would for a tarte tatin.

Serves 8-10 and there will be no leftovers. This is probably great with ice cream, but this cake needs no accoutrement.

For apples:

4 apples – I used a variety (1 each of Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith, and Crispin)

lemon juice to prevent apples from browning as you cut

2 T margarine (or butter if you are making dairy)

1-2 T sugar (or to taste)

For cake batter:

1 C flour

3/4 C sugar

2 eggs

1/2 C canola oil

1 t baking powder

1 t vanilla

2-3 T demerara sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350º F. Grease and flour a 9-inch cake pan, springform or square pan. (If you want to plate this, use a springform; otherwise, just serve it out of the pan.)

Peel and core the apples, then cut into ~12 slices. Sprinkle with lemon juice (you don’t need much – maybe a tablespoon or so for 4 apples) while the others are being sliced to prevent browning.

Heat margarine in pan over low heat and add apples and 1-2 T white sugar. Stir for ~10-15 minutes until apples soften. Some of the liquid will soak into the apples, but if too much of it starts to evaporate, then turn the heat down.

While the apples are on the stove top, mix together the remaining ingredients (except for the demerara sugar) — flour, sugar (the 3/4 C), eggs, oil, baking powder, and vanilla. No mixer is required – you can just mix everything by hand even though the batter is quite thick.

Add half the warm apples (juices and all) to the batter and mix. Then pour into the prepared pan and spread the batter evenly with a spatula. Arrange the remaining apple slices on the top of the batter as decoratively as possible (though even a mishmash will look nice).

for the record - I only used tongs because we were having guests that I had never met ... normally I'd just use my fingers!

Sprinkle the cake with demerara sugar if you’d like and bake for 1 hour.

Let cool before attempting to remove from the pan. It can be a bit difficult to plate due to the stickiness of the fruit (I did a bit of clever patching that you can see close-up below).

I was a bit overzealous in the number of apples that I asked my mom to peel, and we had so many left over that in 5 minutes flat, I whipped up a second batch of batter and made another cake.

Wow…so many new visitors (welcome!) and old friends (welcome back) – thank you all for the kind comments.

– Chuck – I also like pre-cooking the apples and thanks for the kind words re: the photos

– To the 3 (!) Frenchies/friends from France – aka, Dolce, LouLou, and Foodie Froggy – a very special merci to you. The idea of cooking the apples was inspired by a tarte tatin, so, Dolce, a cake tatin is great suggestion! Loulou – let me know how it goes. And Foodie Froggy/Anne – thank you for the compliment — as you know, I think several of your ideas (ahem, challah a la danois) are recreation worthy!

– A Bowl on Mush – I love your name. As for perfection, far from it, but I’ll take the compliment!

– ForTheSpectators – I love cheddar with apple pie… how about mascarpone with this cake?

– Kamran – I adore your enthusiasm and your ability to balance SO much (as a high school student). I use a lot of cloth napkins in my backdrops — otherwise all my pics would be on the same wood table near my window.

– Stephen, PhD – I can’t believe you liked a non-chocolate cake, though mommy and I said the apples tasted a bit like home-made applesauce, so it makes sense…Thanks for all the help with the prep!

Hi Gayle (Zahava), I was looking for a recipe close to my mom’s for Jewish Apple Cake (easy and foolproof) and somehow found your link through facebook. Have you used orange juice in the recipe and is it easy to remove the cake from the pan. I’m Arlene (Hannah) in U.S. and want to bake for friends for Rosh Hashanah.

Hi Arlene. I’ve never tried the cake with orange juice. Are you thinking about replacing the oil with juice? If so, I wouldn’t recommend it. The cake does come easily from the pan, but I find that baking it in a springform pan is best. Let me know how it turns out!

In the interest of historical accuracy, “applesauce” was a required dinner item ever since my first spoon full of it. And, when “mashed potatoes” were available then they managed to get combined with the applesauce. Therefore, it is only logical that a properly made apple cake, such as the one described, could compete with chocolate. Of course, chocolate will always have a special place in my system. But, that is another is another story.

The recipe presented was so well designed that when used in another kitchen laboratory essentially equivalent results were produced.

Love your recipe, such a great one for apple! By the way, your recipe is the only one real adaption I have found on all these cooking blogs, other so-called adoptions are just exact copies of recipes from another website or blog. Nice job!

[…] just that, hot and cold. I had bookmarked a recipe for a delicious looking apple cake by Gayle at Kosher Camembert and decided it would make the fabulous hot component. I had a choice of pouring cream in the fridge […]